Determined to improve himself still further, Browere accepted the offer of his brother, who was captain of a trading-vessel to Italy, to accompany him abroad; and for nearly two years the young man travelled on foot through Italy, Austria, Greece, Switzerland, France, and England, diligently studying art and more especially sculpture. Returning to New York, he began modelling, and soon produced a bust of Alexander Hamilton, from Archibald Robertson’s well-known miniature of the Federal martyr, which was pronounced a meritorious attempt to produce a model in the round from a flat surface. Being of an inventive turn, he began experimenting to obtain casts from the living face in a manner and with a composition different from those commonly employed by sculptors. After many trials and failures, he perfected his process, with the superior results shown in his work. Browere’s first satisfactory achievement was a mask of his friend and preceptor, Robertson, and his second was that of Judge Pierrepont Edwards, of Connecticut. But the most important of his very early works was the mask of John Paulding, the first to die of the captors of André; and this mask, made in 1817, was followed later by masks of Paulding’s coadjutors, Williams and Van Wart; so that we owe to Browere’s nimble fingers the only authentic likenesses we have of these conspicuous patriots of the Revolution. Browere wrote verse and painted pictures in addition to his modelling, and, in the spring of 1821, made an exhibition at the old gallery of the American Academy of the Fine Arts, in Chambers Street, New York, which called forth the following card from his early instructor, Robertson, who was one of the directors of the Academy. It is interesting, notwithstanding the unconscious partiality one is apt to have for a former pupil, and is addressed: _To the American Public._ Having for many years been intimately acquainted with John H. I. Browere, of the City of New York, I deem it a duty which I owe to him as an artist, and to the public as judges, to say that from my own observation of his works both as a painter, poet, and sculptor, I think him endowed with a great genius by nature and first talents by industry. This my opinion, his works lately exhibited in the Gallery of the American Academy of Fine Arts, New York, fully justify and is amply corroborated by all, who with unprejudiced eye, view the works of his hand. ARCHIBALD ROBERTSON. NEW YORK, May 21, 1821.